1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a robot or the like executing a task by making autonomous actions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Trials have been made on a robot by applying various functions such as environment-recognizing function or autonomous moving function to the robot so as to make it execute tasks such as transporting luggage, locomotive road-guiding and the like. It has been expected to avoid a robot from contacting an object so as to execute a task smoothly by mounting thereon an active sensor which outputs electromagnetic waves, supersonic waves or the like for recognizing an external state such as a position or the like of the object and recognizes the external state according to the received reflection waves (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2006-192562). However, in an environment where a plurality of robots mounted with active sensors, it is necessary to avoid the mutual interference between the active sensors. In this regard, there has been disclosed a technical approach which decreases an output intensity of an active sensor disposed in a robot with a low priority order determined according to a priority level or the like of a task when an interval between two robots becomes narrower or the like (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2006-231421).
When plural active sensors are mounted on each robot, the degree of contribution of each active sensor varies in relation to contents of a task or the external state of the robot. Therefore, if the output intensities of all the active sensors are adjusted simply according to the respective priority order of each robot, it is possible that each robot may stop executing the task in vain.